Icon Equipment has the answers.
The bottling industry has evolved significantly over the years, moving from manual operations to highly automated systems that ensure precision, efficiency, and hygiene. Today, businesses require advanced bottling solutions that can keep pace with high production demands while maintaining the quality and consistency of their products. Icon Equipment International stands at the forefront of this evolution, offering a comprehensive range of bottling machines tailored to various industry needs, for food and beverages.
Types of Bottling Machines
When choosing a bottling machine, it’s important to consider the type of liquid being bottled, the production volume, and the specific requirements of your industry. Here are some of the main types of bottling machines offered by Icon Equipment.
Gravity fillers
Gravity fillers are ideal for efficiently filling low-viscosity liquids like water, milk, and other beverages. These machines use gravity to fill bottles, making them both cost-effective and reliable, particularly for businesses producing high volumes of free-flowing liquids. Their simple design ensures easy operation, low maintenance, and minimal downtime, while also allowing for quick product changeovers and easy cleaning, which is crucial for maintaining hygiene in beverage production. Gravity fillers are highly flexible, easily adjustable for different bottle sizes, and available in both semi-automatic and fully automatic configurations. Semi-automatic models typically fill 10 to 30 bottles per minute, while fully automatic inline systems can handle up to 300 bottles per minute. Gravity fillers may not be suitable for very high-speed production lines, as the flow rate is controlled by gravity and the size of the filling nozzles.
Icon boasts decades of experience in designing and manufacturing gravity fillers, capable of achieving speeds of up to 450 containers per minute with 48 valves.
These Australian designed and made fillers are versatile, accommodating container sizes from 90 ml to 5 liters, and offer options for various capping styles, including pick-n-place, ROPP, heat seal, and metal lugs. They are available as a tric bloc configuration, which includes a rinser using either air or water as a medium, with a full neck grip for secure handling. The fillers are well-suited for both cold and hot filling applications, providing flexibility and efficiency for diverse production needs.
Net Weight Fillers
Net weight fillers are designed for industries where precision is essential, ensuring each container is filled with the exact weight of liquid. This accuracy minimizes the risk of under or over-filling, making these machines ideal for high-volume food production, pharmaceuticals, and other industries where strict control over product quantity is critical. By maintaining exact weight, net weight fillers help improve consistency, reduce waste, and comply with regulatory standards, all while maintaining high production efficiency.
Net weight fillers use a weighing system to measure the weight of the product as it is dispensed into the container. This system can include load cells or scales that continuously monitor the weight. These fillers are generally more complex and more expensive than volume-based fillers due to the need for accurate weighing systems.
Aseptic fillers
Aseptic filling machines employ advanced sterilization methods, such as peracetic acid (PAA), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and ultraviolet (UV) light, along with heat or steam, to ensure that equipment and packaging are free from contaminants. These machines operate within sealed sterile chambers equipped with HEPA filters and positive air pressure to prevent airborne contamination. Integrated Clean-In-Place (CIP) and Sterilize-In-Place (SIP) systems automatically clean and sterilize machinery between production runs, maintaining a highly sterile environment. The process is rigorously monitored and validated through sensors and microbial testing. While aseptic filling machines are highly effective in producing shelf-stable, contamination-free products for industries like dairy and pharmaceuticals, they are complex and expensive due to the precision required to maintain sterility and the sophisticated technology involved.
Serac’s aseptic fillers, drawing on 40 years of experience in aseptic filling, feature a unique hygienic design that ensures robust and profitable solutions for high-efficiency production. These machines can handle containers ranging from 50 ml to 2 liters, made from materials such as PET, HDPE, and PP, with outputs varying from 6,000 to 48,000 bottles per hour (1 liter). The in-line packaging sterilization methods include chemical treatments (peracetic acid and hydrogen peroxide) or electron-beam (BluStream) technology, which enhances compactness and environmental efficiency. Key design elements include a patented Multiflow magnetic valve system, a servo-driven capper, a waterproof heat sealer with hygienic design, and an aseptic isolator with unidirectional sterile air flow.
Blow-Fill Lines
Blow-fill machines are advanced systems designed to streamline the production of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles by integrating three critical stages: bottle blowing, filling, and capping. This integrated approach significantly enhances efficiency and reduces production costs compared to traditional methods that require separate machines for each stage.
The process begins with preforms, small PET plastic preforms, which are heated and blown into the desired bottle shape using compressed air, allowing for precise control over dimensions and wall thickness. Once formed, the bottles are transported to the filling station, where techniques such as volumetric or weight-based filling ensure that each bottle receives the correct amount of liquid in a sterile environment, preventing contamination. After filling, the bottles are immediately capped, completing the packaging process in a single cycle, which minimizes handling and the risk of contamination.
Blow-fill machines offer several advantages, including enhanced operational efficiency, reduced footprint, and significant cost savings due to the elimination of separate blow molding, filling, and capping machines.
blow-fill machines maintain stringent quality control standards through real-time monitoring, ensuring consistent product quality while minimizing waste.
Systems like the Serac COMBOX series are particularly well-suited for medium to large-sized batches, enabling manufacturers to produce high-value products without oversizing or overinvesting in machinery. The efficiency of these systems contributes to reduced energy consumption and waste production, making them more environmentally friendly compared to traditional processes.
With impressive production speeds ranging from 5,000 to 18,000 bottles per hour, depending on the model container size and configuration, blow-fill machines are ideal for high-demand production environments. Their versatility allows them to be used across various industries, including beverages, dairy, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics, making them an innovative solution for efficient PET bottle production.
